 Do we have any, just just checking. Okay, I guess I'm getting a, I'm getting a box. You can be heard Liz. So I. Excuse me. That's all right. Okay. First order of business is to. Is to approve the minutes of the last meeting. Okay. Let's see. So I have to actually pull up. The minutes of the last meeting of April of May 13, 2021. Gentlemen, have you had a chance to review the meat, the minutes? Yes. Okay. Any additions or corrections? No, I move they'd be approved. Okay. Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. I think I heard your Lee. Okay. Next. Public participation. Anybody from the public. I don't believe we have anyone from the public. Here. I see only six persistent, persistent participants. And I believe that's the panel. Okay. All right. So let's move to the next item on the agenda. Unfortunately, I'm having trouble pulling up the agenda. Okay. Motive vehicle abatement reports. Liz. First agenda is, is May 4th. 2021. To May 12th, 2021. Takes into account the two from the 2020 grant tax rolls and. Eight from the 2021 tax rolls. And we have a total of $2,859. We have a total of $2,859. And we have a total of $2,859. You're showing us a different, a different screen than the one you're talking about. I'm sorry. I showed you two instead of one. Sorry about that. So that is. You know what. There it is. Is this the one I want? For the first one. That's it. Oh, it is. I'm sorry. I was looking at the top date. That is a May 4th to May 12th. We have a total of $2,859. We have a total of $2,859. We have 20 of them for the 2021. Tax rolls, I should say. And we have a total of $2,859. Okay. Okay. Move to. Move to approve our signatures on that on that set of abatements. Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. That's approved. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay. These are from May 20th. May 20th. So it's all the same day. Okay. Total of $750 and 26 cents. All right. It's two on the 2020 tax rolls and we have eight on the 2021 tax rolls. All right. Any comments, gentlemen? Yeah. All right. I moved to approve that set of abatements. Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay. So we have a total of $2,727 to the 28th. $15,473. And 56 cents is being asked to be abated for these vehicles. And we have a 67 abatements in total. This is the first page. Many of them are rentals. As you see that ENA, holding as enterprise. And some of them from the town of Amherst, obviously. And the Amherst college. University of Massachusetts. Hampshire college. These are exempt. Any questions, gentlemen? Yeah. No. So the total is 15,473 hours and 56 cents. Is that correct? Yes, it is. All right. Move to approve that set of abatements. Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. This is a personal exemption that you approved at the last meeting for Mr. Chapman. Okay. Hang on a minute now. Hang on a minute now. I didn't. That would be the second thing on the agenda where it's assigned real estate personal exemption abatement report for $1,030. Okay. We, we approved this right last time. Yes, you did. This is a summary. And I'm going to look into this with my liaison as to whether or not you really have to approve something twice. Yeah. It seems like it's very redundant. I think that, you know, once, if they're telling you in an open meeting plan that you approve something and don't even need to sign it and that we can use your signatures to approve something, it seems redundant to ask you to approve it a second time. All right. Hopefully this will be the last new meeting so we could. So it will be less of a problem next time, but. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I was just difficulty myself because I'm saying, oh, we are bringing this up again. It made it very confusing. All right. I will tell you what the result of that is. I'm sorry. Go ahead. I will let you know what the result of my investigation is as to whether or not you truly have to approve a summary. Okay. What you've already approved. So this is an abatement of $1,030. For Mr. Allen Chapman. Yes, it is. I'll approve our signatures on that. Second. Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay. Thank you gentlemen. Okay. The next one is. This is one that you also approved at the last meeting for the solar exemption. This was a Scribner's error. It was supposed to be exempt. And we did vote to accept the adjustment at the last meeting. This is a summary. That's an exemption. That. Changes the, the tax built. It moves the tax bill for a solar. Okay. Move to approve that. Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. So that same thing would apply there. If you find out, we don't have to do it twice. That wouldn't come up again like that. Exactly. Exactly. And, and virtually. You would only be asked to meet to make true adjudications instead of also approving the summary of those adjudications. There's a lot of this seems like accounting more than it does approving. Well, and I think. That if they're saying that you've approved it in an open meeting, therefore that's the only approval necessary. It seems redundant to have you come back and approve the summary thereof. I think that's a good point. Unless you really want to see the summary, which I have no problem. The last. I understand. All right. The last on these, this agenda is. The warrant from the collector notice of commitment. And let me bring that up a little bit bigger so everybody can see that I have that very small. I'm sorry. A little bit bigger. Okay. So we have. 314,665. And 60 cents. And this is for. 1,499 accounts. To commit. So we did one of these last time. Is that correct? We signed one of these periodically. Yes. And now this is pretty substantial. Okay. So we're, we're adding 314,665 and 60 cents. Okay. And so. I see it's been labeled number two, right? That's commitment number two. So we get these commitments in an order and they just label them one. One commitment to three and so on. So as they come in during the fiscal year, they just label them one. And this is for the motor vehicle excise. And I was asking Teresa if this is our largest and she says, ah, not really. You know, we've got a similar one back in December, I guess. When was the last time we had another one that was this size. So the first one she said is in January. Okay. Okay. Move to approve our signatures on this. The notice of commitment number two. Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Okay. And I just got the commitment. For actually, it's a signed personal property, eight of 58. It's a revised agenda. Let me see if I can grab that. I'm going to stop sharing for just a moment, gentlemen. Is it in this file? You show me where. All right, we're all set up for the last one. I was premature because I didn't have the most, the latest and greatest agenda. This is the eight of 58. I'm going to be bringing up and you may have some questions about that. I know I did. Okay. Can everybody see this document? Yes. Okay. Does anybody have any questions as to what the eight of 58 is? Miss LaFountain gave us a brief, a brief narrative here. Why didn't you tell us what we're doing here? What happens is when things are on the books for a period of time, and we've had things as it shows here since 2002. Up into 2014. It's much like. You know how in credit cards, they have what they call a charge off. It doesn't mean that they don't pursue the debt, but they don't consider it an active debt. So what they do is they put it in as what they call eight of 58. It's almost like a suspense. And we still go after these bills. But they put it in a separate category. And this has been recommended by our, by our auditors. So eight of 58 is not so eight items or 58 items. It's not. It's actually. It's a reference to the statute, I believe. It's a reference to the, the Massachusetts law. That's what eight of 58 is. So it's chapter 58 and it's section eight. I believe is what they're referencing. Okay. Wow. Yeah. I'm surprised the finance department doesn't have a better policy. I mean, it seems going back to 2002 is a long time. They should have been on top of this sooner, but that's not your responsibility, Liz. No, unfortunately that's, that's, you know, one of those things that an auditor might pick up and say, you know, this is an area I want you to address. And maybe this last auditor felt that this was something that was overlooked. So in fairness to the finance department, a lot of times that's how it, how it. It's derived. So I'm going to just go over a few things. These are the, the, the accounts that we're looking at. I don't know. These are tax bills that haven't been paid, right? Correct. They're overdue. The fortunate thing is some of these, I'm looking at a, you know, unfortunately, some of these are out of business. And it might be very difficult to track down. I'm going to go on to the next ones. And if you're seeing the names repeat, it means it's on different tax periods or tax rolls. Some bigger ones there. These are for. It's like these are also for. Unpaid bills. So forth. Is Sean live right now? Yes, he is. Hi, Sean. Tell me if I'm going too fast, gentlemen. No, I guess I have a general question from Sean. Is there a policy in finance to handle these? You must not be. You may have stepped away. Okay. Yeah. Some of these are very small amounts. Yeah, but most businesses have, you know, after a certain number of years, you just write it off. Or if you decide to proceed with legal action or something, you know, this seems very subjective to me. Unfortunately, it is a standard practice that we do. We do in all the towns. As a matter of fact that they do it in other states as well. I'm sorry, Ken, what do you mean by subjective? Well, I mean, I assume we're going after some tax payers that don't pay by filing liens and stuff. It depends on what the bill is. If it's a real estate bill, it's easy to put a lien. If it's a business lien, I'm not, I'm not sure what the practice is for that. Or personal property. Or for vehicles, you know, I guess it's a taxpayer. I mean, the vehicles are easier to do too, but the businesses are a little tougher because the, the businesses, you know, if they go out and decide not to pay their bill, it's tough to go after them, especially if they dissolve their LLC or corporation. Again, this is the finance committee area, not ours. Well, since, since, so what is our function here? Your function is to determine whether or not you feel the obligation to move these into that classification of eight to 58. And that basically says that we're taking it out of the active bills and we're putting it in a eight to 58 category. And that category is bills that have been on the rolls for a lengthy period of time. And they are pursuing them, but it's not on the active billing. So we're doing it solely based on the recommendation of the finance committee. And the recommendation from the tax collector and the auditors. How come the timing is such, I mean, we're going back to 2002. It seems like if this is an auditor issue or accounting issue that it would be addressed in a reasonable period of time, that's a long time. I really can't speak to that. All I can speak to is that, you know, we have 106 bills here. We have a total unpaid balance of 13,652 dollars and 49 cents. And that's for personal property. So these are business personal property bills. So I'm, I'm, I'm sorry. We haven't seen this before. So I don't, I don't recall this being any kind of a routine thing. So I guess I'm curious as to what it is we're approving here. You're, you're, if I, if I go to the very top and look at Jennifer's narrative, this is what you're approving that. Yeah. Let me just read it aloud. It says it has been recommended by our auditors to reduce the amount of fiscal years active collection. In the billing system. I am requesting to have fiscal years 2002 to 2014. Personal property right off as eight of 58. And as I said, eight of 58 means chapter 58 section eight as uncollectible. This will remove them from our active outstanding list, but we can continue to collect the collect money towards them. It doesn't say we will, it just says we can. Yes. As far as I know, most collectors will pursue it. So what is the, so I guess I'm sorry. If I'm asking questions that we don't know the answers to. That's okay. If I don't have the answers, I'll research it for you. So what is the effect of removing them from our active outstanding list? What is that? You know, one of the things that a collection agency is often. You know, one of the things that a collection agency is often done is their collection rate. So by removing the eight of 58, it will increase the collection rate. That seems like Mickey mouse to me, but I, I'm going solely on this recommendation. Rich. I mean, we're not approving who they're doing it to. We're just. Finances of recommended. Because the otters say where they should do it. I don't understand why it's coming to us, but apparently to get into that account, they have to get the assessor, board of assessors to prove it. It's part of the formality. Notification. I guess I'm, I guess these folks that these, I take it with these all businesses or with their individuals, they are all businesses. Some of our own individually. And I can certainly bring that list back up for you. So would there, is there a mechanism. If this person comes back, this business comes back in some way. For there to be for their tax bill to pop up. Oh yeah. If someone comes back and tries to operate. They're going to be flagged. Are some of these still operating? Or are they all defunct? Some of them may be still operating. You know, but it doesn't mean that that bill that they have is still on the active. As far as I know, though, at least most of these are inactive and not operating. I would think they have to get approvals from the town annually on some of these businesses. And we should just usually for licensing and permits and things like that, they want to make sure that they're paid up in order to be issued those licenses or permits. But as far as doing business itself, I really can't speak to that. I mean, they get a new license. They shouldn't get a new license if they owe taxes. That's one way that we do get a checks and balances is to, you know, hold up the licensing. A lot of times even some of these businesses that we had in town were applying for relief from COVID this year. And I was able to bring to their attention that they hadn't filed a form of list with the assessor's office. And the other agencies worked with me and we were able to get them back on the books. Yeah. Good. Yeah. Go to the latest year. I'm just curious what, what's the latest year? 2014. Well, no, it doesn't go that. That far. Let me see. This is the summary. So 2014 would be the latest. Six, six bills. For that for me. They're giving me summaries. You see. Yeah. It should be. For that. You're almost there. 17 up there. I think it's like 17. All right, we'll take your word for it. Ah, let's see. What year is this? That's 14. It is 14. Oh, there it is on the bottom. I expect things like that on the top. Don't you. Anybody recognize any of those people? Are they all out of business? Oh, no. Um, Tran Yan. I don't know. Go to 16. Let us please. 16. Sure. Well, that's not any good. Go back to 17, I don't understand. I mean, 14. Oh, I see. Six bills of okay. They're only six. Okay. Got it. Thank you. You're welcome. I don't understand what we're doing here. What I understand is that we're approving accounting. Recommendation, right? And I don't know why we're involved in approving that. Except maybe just a notification. They're notifying us that they're doing it. No, I think it's a checks and balance. That has to happen as part of this process. Okay. I guess I'll go on the. The recommendation from the finance committee, but Liz for the next. Now can you keep referring to the finance committee and I don't know where. The finance department, this collector assistant treasurer, this finance department person. Sean is back. You can ask him your question. Sean. Yeah, sorry, I had to take a call real quick. Oh, no problem. No, we were just going to tap your knowledge. Sure. We're looking at these. Yeah. I mean, is there a policy? It doesn't seem if there is a policy, they're adhering to it. These are about the. The accounts that are being written off as uncollectible. Right. I explained that they're in chapter 58 subsection set. Subsection eight. Yeah, let me. Let me check with our, it's sort of a joint effort by the treasurer and the collector. Let me see. What they've done in the past. I mean, sometimes I think they try to pursue them until they. Receive some sort of indication that they're really, that's going to be unlikely. And that's when they write them off. But let me. Let me get their input and I can send it. I can just email that to the board just as an informational piece to you all after. So you have a sense of how they're, how that process works. And Sean, we're trying to understand what is our role and why are we involved. Why are you involved in terms of waving it. Approving the recommendation. Yes. Yeah, I can try to see what the statute is. I mean, my guess is because you sort of help create the list that has to be collected. That you also have to be involved in the sort of. Removing of items from that list. Which is why it's being brought back to you. Oh. Are we perhaps we're acting out of an abundance of caution here, but. Maybe we want to wait. Before we approve this. When's your next meeting? Is it not till July? Well, actually they were going to, I was going to say that's part of our discussion today about summer hours, gentlemen. We haven't got to that discussion yet. Did you want to mention it? Well, I was going to suggest that we meet. July or August, but not both. Yeah. Sean, I'm, I'm comfortable if you're comfortable. They're doing the right thing and we're doing the right thing to vote on this, but yeah, if you guys have, if you have two minutes, I can go talk to the collector. She's right outside. I can just kind of. What I can do is I can bring up that chapter for you gentlemen. That way we can review it together while he's checking with her. I don't want to do that. That's okay. I'll be right back. We can keep going. Okay. Very good. All right. So. We'll revisit that the next one. Let's see. I think that's it because we just did this one. Yeah. And all we're doing right now is we're going to go to. Stop sharing for just a moment so I can take that down. I'm going to go to the. Survey. Because I want to show you the latest iteration of the survey. So let me just to make sure is this. I just want to make sure that this is on the agenda. Yes, it is. Yeah, it's discussed residential exemption. Okay. All right. Okay. And basically where we are with this residential exemption study is to. Get the survey off and launched. I'm so excited to get that done. And I'm going to bring it up for you so that you can all see what we're going to be putting out to the public. The only thing that's missing from this is the link. This is what we sent. Or we are sending to Paul to approve so that we can launch it out to the public. There we go. Can you see that now, gentlemen? I certainly can. For myself as well as everybody else. Is that big enough or would you like it a little bit bigger? Yeah, I'm bigger. Okay. There we go. So as you see at the top. It's not changing on our screen. It's not changing on your screen as far as the size. Right. I don't, I have it 125 on mine. I think it's a little bit bigger. Something to get it to us. It's been one of those issues that. Surge has been working with me. I'm going to try to close it and I'm going to try to bring it up again. This didn't get included in our attachments. You know, I'm sorry about that, gentlemen. I thought that went out to, did we not send you that's a copy of the survey yet? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Unless. Unless Lee or Ken. I didn't say no. All right. Obviously if there's anything on here that you want me to point out to the select man, I mean, to the town manager, as far as the. Any edits that you would like to have done, let me know. I'd be glad to relay them. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I'm just going to give you a quick update on that. You know, we'll try to have a quick, quick update on that. Cause I really can't. Now I've got half of it. What's not the survey. Oh, yes. It is a survey, but you're right. Half. You might have to reduce it now. Do you want me to say. No, I can't win sometimes. Do you want me to give you a quick update on. I just spoke to it. So I just spoke with our collector. So that was that. That was personal property, right? That eight of 58. Yes it was. Okay. Personal property. than five years but she did say with personal property there was a time where you um she didn't think you could write stuff off if the if it was if the entity was still in business um so she thinks that might have been part of why that some of those really old ones were still there um but she said this in particular is brought forth because the otters periodically check it and they make recommendations on things that they feel should be waived um and she confirmed that again because you sort of identify the list of taxes to be collected um that's why it's being brought back to you to kind of take these ones off as uncollectable um and there is not a specific time constraint so you don't have to vote in June um if you don't want to we just want to have it done before the next before the next audit cycle happens so the otters can see that that list was cleaned up um but I don't think there's anything um sort of controversial about it either. So this is not an annual cleanup this is I think they want to do it annually or they want to rotate every other year between um excise and personal property um so they but they do want to that's you know sometimes especially this past year things can kind of get lost but they do want to try to keep it um you know anything older than five years to clean those things up. So can you explain I'm sorry operationally what are we doing what what does it mean when we do this? So you're taking something that um is on essentially like an account receivable list of us going you know on our books as a being owed to us and you're waving it off of our books because it's no longer um certain that we're going to collect it because of a variety of reasons some of them be in age but possibly a business going now um there's different reasons for each of them but um you're essentially taking something off of our list to collect okay but we are but they are still going to try to pursue it it's just sort of the official on the books list um that these are the chart the accounts that they don't feel that they feel doubt about um and if you want we could also you know if you don't feel comfortable voting today we could try to have like the treasurer and collector come to the next meeting too and talk about some of these if that's helpful. So let me ask you this um let's just say I'm on this list I have one of the businesses one of the businesses that I ran into the growing homes um went out of business I come back into town as the Richard Morse sushi bar and storm door company. Do is there some mechanism in which my prior identity my prior business identity comes up and the town wants me to pay uh pay off on uh on these I don't have the answer um that would be something we'd want to ask the collector and the treasurer about what sort of data they collect when um they build people that like and if you have a prior outstanding amount you have to pay that first um before you're a lot you know before you pay the newest amount um so we could get that that answered uh to your sushi business um Rich Rich I doubt if you have a different entity they're not going to be able to go after the new entity oh okay yeah well yeah so I think I think it depends in some ways how it's set up too if it's you know if you're a if um you know if you're a single owner versus something that's incorporated versus you know different uh types of starting a business that may make a difference as well but um I don't want to give you a definitive answer because I don't know so this is this is I take it that this is affecting somebody's performance um I don't know I guess I'm Ken's laughing because I can't I don't really understand what it is that we're affecting here or what it is that we're enabling or I can't really understand what it is that we're doing I you're you're essentially you know we again we have a an account receivable amount for amounts owed to the town and you're essentially reducing it by the amount of these accounts as no longer being officially owed to the town um on our sort of financial statements um but again Jen Jen and and the treasurer said that they're still obviously going to try to pursue it but again when it gets to this level you know the one from 2002 you know almost 20 years old um almost impossible and we're looking at like 15 years of unpaid bills right right what was the total amount Liz I'll bring it back up for you um because again in the grand scheme of things our collector's office um and our treasurer's office do a great job collecting they do we have a very very very diligent for trying to get those tax dollars this is this is more of a housekeeping item to clean up our books you're you're saying this we're good versus relative to other municipalities is that what you're saying yeah we have a just a we have I think it's like a 98 to 99% collection rate which is um it's outstanding collection rate it's pretty strong yeah okay especially on some of these hard times that we've been through in the last year um I tell you they work really hard getting the money I listen to to to the staff and the tax office and the treasurer every day all right so the total is the 13,652 yes it does okay 13,652 dollars and 49 cents for 106 accounts of business personal property over over 2002 fiscal year 2002 to 2014 and what it's 12 years so that's an average of about a little over a thousand dollars a year yeah yeah and out of you know 50 to 60 million dollars of taxes assessed each year and that's a very small amount and again if you feel uncomfortable today I don't have any you know problem with let's we could put on the next agenda when the collector and the treasurer can be here and if you wanted more detail about you know you know some of the specific reasons why some you know and accounts on this list they probably can provide more of that I'm fine rich with us great I'm fine now too all right but but your question about rich your question about you know coming back in under another entity yes you might put ask that question if there's yeah yeah I can certainly ask that yeah right but but I'm fine with voting on this so do I have a motion yeah move to approve the what do we call it this would be chapter 58 section 8 uncollectibles their personal property being moved from active tax active collectibles to uncollectibles let me let me bring up the word the wording that that gen used I think that's probably the best she refers to it as it was active for collection in the billing system to uncollectible yeah it's the fiscal year is 2002 through 2014 personal property write off as of 8 of 58 uncollectible so move second all those in favor please say hi hi hi hi thank you gentlemen I guess a side notice Sean is there also something like this for real estate so I don't think so for real estate but there is for excise I think I think when I asked I just talked to the collector a minute ago I think she said we're not allowed to do it for real estate but I will I'll double check that as well what we do for the real estate is we put leans against their property so they really can't get out of it because if they don't pay their bill then we put a lien on the they call it a taking on the Hampshire Registry of Deeds so if you ever look on the Hampshire Registry of Deeds and you see the reference to taking it doesn't mean that we took something it means that we're putting notice on the land records that they're outstanding so if for instance that property should change hands we get that that tax those tax dollars so I continue to be astounded by what sort of matters of first impression that we get in this otherwise mundane service function that we have so what do you mean by that rich well I mean we hadn't seen we hadn't seen this before I think this is year five for me or so I just okay yeah she said she said this one may have been a while since they last cleaned it up and that's why the auditor's flagged it yeah okay looks like it's been 20 years rich no 15 all right they said five years old that's how long all right good what's next Liz you were going over the survey so we're ready to do this again next year Sean if you wanted to do it again hopefully it's very much smaller the next time all right okay did you want me to go back to the survey gentlemen was there any questions about that certainly is that big enough for you all to see yes yeah okay if you're looking at the top of the the survey what you're going to see is the owner's name you're going to see the mailing address then below what you're going to see the property location to the right you're going to see that the property identification number that they need to enter it's a unique number and that's what they'll need to enter if they do it online if they return this survey the property identification number is going to be there to make it easy for the dead entry person to put it in but David had a genius idea he said why not put the exemption code that we have to show the status we have this property in now so if someone comes back with it and says yes I'm owner occupied and we have it listed as owner occupied we don't even have to enter that field so that'll be something we get to get out of basically what we're asking is for folks to volunteer the information and it's asking did you own and occupy this property as the principal residents in the town of emmer's January 1st 2021 yes or no and then it goes on to section one and this is for the multi families I might put a space in between there that's kind of smushed together about but if there's anything else that yeah I don't think that's right okay because it's not just for multi family we want residential single family that's rented too right so Liz and I and David spoke about this and we're not so that the thing we need to do this survey or to do the analysis is really number one right Liz yes number one yeah that's a key other these other questions are helpful but if we don't send the survey to everyone we're not quite sure how helpful the data is and the plan wasn't to send the survey to everybody the plan was only to send the survey to sort of identified properties that we don't have in from you know we don't have the the answer to number one on so we're not you know I think we we're not 100 positive we're definitely going to go with all these questions because we need to like if we get it if we get the answer to that but it's only on 1400 properties or you know what does that tell us we're not sure that's a good point I mean because if the council wants more if they want to say okay well how many houses in amherst are rented to college students you're saying we're going to have to do a survey again for everybody yeah I mean you might have to send it to everybody and and so this information is you know if it could be really useful or informational but yeah if we don't send the survey to everyone then we're not sure if it's going to it'll be limited in terms of how you can extrapolate it that I'd be inclined just to delete everything but one then and I think that's Liz was sort of severe when you were headed originally um yeah I can bring up the other one as well because that is the one that we had initially and because the other thing that this we weren't planning on this going to was apartment complexes which I would think that would be we'd want this to go to apartment complexes as well to really find out you know this is not number one then okay let me bring up the the revision that I had before were we were we legally entitled to ask the information in two three four five I felt a little uncomfortable about it yeah well I was a little nervous about like the the college student one in particular um but you're right some of these you know if it's voluntary maybe but I don't know if we've gotten a confirmation that there's any just things we have to be careful about when we ask this type of information so Liz I don't think you have to bring up a different survey we'll just have number one that's the only question so can you are so you're just so I understand so you are you are indicating your desire that the rest of that section one be out right yeah take two section one two through seven be deleted okay just that question one only so is this going to be included with the tax bill no uh no this is going to be a separate mailing right Liz that's correct oh boy I'm a little confused on it it's only going again the one reason why it's not included the tax bill is it's only going to um how was the list identified Liz of who it's going to is it just ones that we don't have the information in the system already about well one of the things that um we're still in discussion about is who who is going to get this survey um you know I've got some recommendations from David as to who he feels we should send it out to and it greatly expanded the number so I really need to get an idea of the scope of how many people I have the list ready to go I just need to know how money we're going to narrow it down to if we're only going to narrow it down to um folks that have an in-town address and folks that do not have a um a management company um I think those probably easily be removed from the list for instance the ones that are the large apartments we know the ones that are uh care of canada uh I mean that canada Kendrick associates there's a large number of those we have those that are managed by Mr. Baum we have those that are managed by W.D. Coles we have those that are managed by Jones Group those are easily identified as rental properties so you know getting some of those out including the rental homes because a lot of the residential homes are um occupied by students as well as you know um I think we can weed those out safely um so are we um we I think I saw no explanation as to why we want this information this is to help us do the um analysis so this is we need this to to update the analysis of how the residential exemption will impact the town um we need to have a better sense of how many properties are not owner occupied I sort of get it but but I guess what I'm saying is the the person receiving the mail I don't I just found the one that I did last time with the with the board would you like to see it can you see it up there now this is what we had chosen for verbiage last time we got together so rich that addresses your question the first part okay all right fine all right does that does that still work or did you have any edits or comments for that no I'm still a little confused how do they find that PDI or PID or whatever it is the PID will be populated on the the survey letter that goes out to them and would that would it that's a unique ID that's within the mass appraisal system okay so it'd be a little harder for someone to kind of figure out if they wanted to falsify a survey okay so if they send it back mail there it's all they have to do is check yes or no correct and just pop it in the mail or pop it in the outbox or send it carrier pigeon online they have to copy the number from a mailing that's correct that's correct that's why it says use your assigned property ID that's what that PID stands for I outlined it in the acronym so that they would know so just just anticipating here and since Sean is here and Ken and I went back and forth when I had a little back and forth on this and actually I'd love to agree with Ken on this are we going to be expect are we going to be expected is the principal assessor and the board going to be expected to have a recommendation this fall about an exempt a residential exemption Sean um so I would just I would hold on that I think what we want to do is get the report and the data together and get that to you to review and then we can discuss I mean if the data I think it's up for you to decide if you want to have a recommendation if the data you know shows like a you know really extreme impact on apartment complexes or really extreme impact on um you know some elements and you feel that that's not right or not you know and you're you know based on whatever the board decides that you don't agree with it then you could choose to either recommend or not recommend you know based on how you feel about it um I don't think you have to though I think the main thing is we want you to kind of review the the report that we put together and give us feedback on it you know does it do we feel like it addresses everything that we needed to address before it then goes off to the council okay because Ken I think Ken thinks feels that if I'm he can speak for himself obviously but I think he feels as though our presenting the data is is our function and that's it well I'm trying to remember what David did in the past no yeah but but but did he make a recommendation or did he just speak about what other towns had done um and why um I don't remember you know specifically if a recommendation was made I guess Sean the question I have is are you going to talk or Paul going to talk to the council to get their feedback before you send them the report yep um sorry I mean yeah we actually we have a memo that I reviewed with Dave and and Liz last week and I'll you know we're gonna I'll send you a copy of it too just for your records I'm sending we're gonna send the survey and the memo to Paul get his final review and then that's the memo in particular is going to go off to the to the council and essentially what the memo does is just outline where we are as of today what we're doing um you know what information we're trying to seek and then sort of puts it out there like if you have any questions or you know concerns you don't feel they're going to be addressed by this process to to let us know directly um and we're going to go from there but we're going to get that out get that to Paul this week and hope we're a little behind schedule from where I wanted to be but um get it to Paul this week and try to get to the council next week okay because it's really the council and this is a redistribution of taxes it's not new taxes right so it's solely what does the council want to know to decide if or do they want to redistribute taxes right yeah and what I've and you know what you'll see and we talked about a little bit like if the council you know we're going to make a sort of preliminary report to the council and then I think what I'm we're going to recommend to the councils before you decide anything you know either you can decide no if you don't if they don't like it um if it looks like a possibility something that they would consider then they should conduct uh you know or they and meaning us in the town and then need to conduct a some sort of public engagement process because obviously it could have um you know pretty big ramifications that that that we need to make sure everyone's informed and people have a chance to weigh in and there's probably something in the charter that requires you know some sort of hearing um so you know we're planning to kind of give a preliminary report in September if it's something that you said they want to move forward with then we would have to do a couple months of public engagement before they would come back and potentially vote on it in the fall um or later in late fall early winter so um yeah so that's why we want to get moving because we want to make sure there's plenty of time for them to consider it before they set the tax rate otherwise you know then it might be another year before we do this yeah that's good okay gentlemen I don't think I have anything else on the agenda okay I just um wanted to uh indicate that I have I have a I have been alerted to the fact that in the lab that there have been um that there are currently and I don't want to raise this for discussion I want to raise this as a potential agenda item sometime in the future apparently there are our homes are selling at something like 30 to 40 percent above assessed value right now over the last three or four months bidding wars yes so I'm just I'm just indicating that um I I just wonder what whether that raises any questions in town or would the board of assessors or would the town council um about what's happening but apparently um it's um yeah it's significantly above assessed value at homes are selling right now yes it is now that right now that's just that's just interesting but I'm just wondering um what that means I just went over there it's actually with the taxpayer and um well actually I'm presenting it to a couple of folks that we had at Greenleath that are disputing the adjustment made on their batements and one of the things that happens is if a residential property exceeds 10 percent sales analysis um increase then we are obliged to change the assessment to fall in line with the other properties and we have to increase their assessment the same thing as if it falls below 10 percent you're saying you mean you mean a class right Liz like a classification of property so for instance a single family home is a classification so the whole class goes yes the whole class goes the whole class goes now is that analysis Liz based on a year's worth of sales or yes it is okay so for the year's worth of sales it's 10 percent higher than what you thought it was going to be you have to update the entire class um to where it should be right to fall within the margin well at least to be acceptable to the the dr s I may not go a whole 10 percent but you know it has to be adjusted to within the range that's acceptable because that is on our radar yeah Liz and I spoke about that yesterday actually right Liz we talked about yes we did yeah so what what is the what is the um what is the decision point where is the where we when we give this information to the department of revenue services every year they will um we will have to show them that we've adjusted our tables for assessment accordingly and substantiate we've made a uh assessment adjustment for that class of property um if it's industrial or commercial it has to exceed 15 percent up or down so without be the fall is when we do the tech when we set the work on the tax rate and all the reports is that when the analysis is sort of it is in the fall yes okay to be effective and the calendar year is that it it would be effective for the following fiscal year yes I think David used to do this behind the scenes very often you know you look at every year and sometimes I think last year you actually increased them I mean it was last year I did I increased them yes okay yeah so it's not something new or unique it's just no yeah I mean it's been in place for quite a while the housing market's a little unique though I think I mean it's always been going up but I think the the housing market the last few months has been really you know everywhere has been really unusual in terms of how fast it's it's going up so that to Rich's point it could be sort of a if we have to raise sort of the cross the board values it could be sort of a shock to some people but it might it might have the effect of lowering the rate correct right it would it could lower the it could end up lowering the tax rate usually if usually if there's a substantial increase to the base but so many components go into the rate let's face it how much the state commonwealth provides and reimbursement funding no but your point's right Rich that you know if the value goes up but we still need the same amount of money to run government that the rate will go down which is good I mean in some ways that's good we'd like the right to go down too so I'm sorry am I is this in context is what's been happening in the last three or four months of something that's significant significantly I mean these sales are significantly over the assessed value that's something that's something that's noticeable right it's it's it's going to be the cumulative that's going to determine what happens it's going to be the cumulative of sales that's going to determine what happens in each class okay I can give you more of a breakdown of that for our next meeting if you'd like it'd be interesting sure what about our next meeting well David had recommended that he takes some time off for the summer but I do have some some I'll leave it up to Sean if he wants to share about the management portion of this sort of thing but other than that I'm all ears what do you want to do gentlemen well I um uh well I was going to suggest July or August but not both yeah July would be better for me okay yeah I'm all right if it's Zoom I if it's in person I probably can't make them okay well um I was told by the manager this morning by manager's office excuse me not the manager um that uh we may have to have um and Sean can contradict me on this if we have a July meeting we may need to have two people physically in the building is that is that right yes we're going back to business as usual yeah yeah I mean I thought what he said earlier today and we can confirm is that the chair needs to be present um and I think you need a the quorum of the committee present and then so so it's possible if Lee and Rich were here that can might be able to participate remotely but we'd have again we'll have to double check that I think that's what he said this morning okay so our alternatives are I'm going to suggest alternatives of July 8th or August 12th but not both July 8th works for me July 8th works for me yeah go for it okay all right so and so we'll assume that um that after that we go to September something all right but um a general question will committee meetings still be on Zoom even if they're meeting a person or not so I think it depends where it is um this is something that we're sort of actively working on is um right now there's sort of one room set up to be hybrid and that's the the town council's meeting room um so meetings that are in that room theoretically could be on Zoom and in person I don't think any other rooms right now are set up to do that so they would be they would be just in person like you know the way it was done in the past I mean I I would like to suggest that based on my meeting viewing of the other committee's meetings our board is particularly um adversely affected by the Zoom meetings we're just better off in person um because we have to sign things you know it's somebody signing up for us someone is yeah but it would be better if we were in person so but um you know it would be nice if we could do it in the town in the meeting room downstairs yeah you only you only need to use the town council room if you want to try to make them like it's like Ken asked if we could want to have them on Zoom at the same time if you're not going to go that route um you know it's possible where Ken maybe could just call in yeah that's fine with me I don't need to be on Zoom I mean just call and it's fine can we can we operate a Zoom meeting in that room Sean I don't think the technology is set up to do because there's more when you do a hybrid meeting with Zoom at the same time there's a whole lot of other technology considerations around microphones and things like that so you're not going to interference and and it's more complex than just sort of setting up a computer I mean if we've had meetings with a quorum before where we didn't have the third person yeah and if we're talking about Ken missing one meeting I think yeah right we can manage right yep so and I'm assuming that Lee has been reappointed is that correct now Rich it's me oh it's you I keep getting no I haven't heard anything Sean do we know anything about um whether we're going to have our three members I can ask I'll ask um Paul where the appointment is so that's for Ken okay Ken Ken's golden coach turns into a pumpkin at the end of the month if uh at the end of June yes June 30th all right I'll email him right now okay all right so we're gonna assume that we have Ken but we don't know but you won't need me for July anyway okay all right okay and so Lee has one more year is that right yeah should have one more year all right and I've got two so I think yeah that sounds right okay and Sean I'm gonna need a parking sticker too okay uh oh when you start coming in yeah um I think I'll mention that anybody else need it I I just I feed the meter but okay all right I'll mention it to the um town clerk I think the town clerk uh I think usually it's Jen LaFollette that she was the one that handed me my pass if I should get them gentlemen I'll make sure I distribute them to you even if I have to drop them off okay you'll take you'll take care of that list I'll take care of that what is it that we're going to need to discuss about the survey in either uh July or September um if I have to run in a minute but if you're okay with it I think what we'd like to do is just go forward with this we'll go with that one question if there's any major changes we'll let you know but otherwise I think we just want to get the survey out um unless there unless you want to see it one more time but I think I can certainly bring it back up on the screen whenever time gentlemen because we kind of want to do it um we kind of want to do it soon I'll be honest I think the uh yeah I we want to get it done soon because we've got to get try to get the analysis done over the summer so do you need a formal motion from the board about the survey I don't think so do you Liz do you think we need a because you're not making any judgment you're just discussing it and making sure that it is being presented to the the town the town manager in the format that you'd like to see it presented yeah and I think we can I mean we can always sort of gather data I don't think we um I mean you you're welcome to if you want to I just don't think it's necessary if you like gentlemen I can email you the the latest version we just brought up so that you can have a look at it would you like that that'd be fine okay I'd be glad to do that um but if so it's intended to go out when uh so if we get it to Paul this week and get to the council next week um probably leave I would say late June early July would be our hope to get it out and then probably allow um I don't know Liz what do you think a few weeks for people to return it um I've never done a survey here in Amherst I don't know how responsive I can resource to Nate and Brianna and the planning and IT departments to determine how well they had their surveys respond because I was also going to ask them about you know processing the surveys how many people and how many hours did it take to process yeah we don't we don't need a hundred I mean a hundred percent would be great we don't need a hundred percent return rate because it's it's really just trying to get our estimates that's right we just need a reasonable response in order to get a good sample and what what is that what's the sample size that it should be responded I figured I'd compare it to what happened in other communities for the surveys that came back for the residential exemption to see how well that they were responded didn't David mention that last time we got like 50 to 60 back and that was good mm-hmm something like that yeah it was a pretty good response June and July yeah and so rich I don't think we're we have much rubber roll until September anyway because they the survey doesn't tell us much it's after they it's the response yeah all right okay and hopefully we'll get some step from data from other resources to help support the data some such as you know at the U.S. Census I believe was in process when we had COVID I mean just just just so it's clear if I'd love to be in the in the position that Ken is advocating where we just stay out of it but so and just just facilitate the just the facts data yes present the data yeah my recollection is is that every year David made a recommendation about that's the the split rate yeah and also the residential exemption but that's my recollection of how that's true okay okay all right move to adjourn thank you all second all right all those in favor please say aye have a good summer July 8th at 11 a.m. July 8th at 11 a.m. we'll see you there all right thank you if you have any questions and I'll send out that survey to you gentlemen thank you Elizabeth appreciate it thank you enjoy your summer thanks you too